Stylus: Downloading styles from another site.

[TayliaM]

Can Stylus be adapted to install for freestyler.ws? With the site issues on US.o, it might be a welcomed feature.

[tophf]

Currently the users can simply copypaste full CSS code from any site including freestyler and import it in Stylus editor.

To use that site's API directly like we do on USO we'd have to imitate their extension, which is cumbersome yet doable, but does that require an explicit permission of the site owners? @schomery, @narcolepticinsomniac, thoughts?

[narcolepticinsomniac]

does that require an explicit permission of the site owners?

Even if it does, which I wouldn't think it would, that only applies if the site owners had an issue with it. I highly doubt they'd care, given that their content is pilfered from USO and other sites to begin with, and they do the same thing in their extension to allow installs from USO and others, not to mention they probably welcome any extra traffic regardless of where it comes from.

As long as it's not extremely difficult, or detrimental in any way, I don't see the harm. It's pretty damn sad that users now view FWS as less broken and sleazy than USO, but they're not wrong. I used to use their extension back when Stylish for Chrome had injection delays. They had some spyware tracking code in it, and some users reported that it replaced online ads with its own. I blocked it from phoning home, so I didn't care much. The extension itself was pretty decent and actively developed.

[JourneyOver]

tbh FWS used to allow stylish to install any of the styles on their site through the install button, because I remember going on their site one time and installing a style through the button when stylishs site was down. Dunno when they changed it to only work for their own extension.

[tophf]

The FWS install button doesn't work in Stylish/Stylus on a few styles I've tried.

The communication scheme seems pretty simple at least for a style without settings, which I've determined pretty quickly yesterday. However, I don't like to look at that extension's code for too long (it irritates me) so I took a break. Luckily, style settings on USO seem to have been fixed so the issue is no longer urgent.

[narcolepticinsomniac]

Well, I don't browse or install styles from USO much, but users are still complaining that the implementation is inferior to what it used to be. That's not the only issue with USO either. The design is terrible and broken, and their search capabilities are pathetic compared to what they used to be. For example:

https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?category=userstyles.org

A lot of regular site searches return zero relevant results, and forget about keywords or advanced search options like "newly updated".

These are both issues you would think they'd resolve quickly, but they don't appear to have a clue what they're doing. Weeks go by before they kinda-sorta half-ass fix things that they've broken, then they disappear again.

This isn't an issue I care that much about personally, but to say that USO is no longer reliable would be an understatement. The first thing they did was mangle the entire USO DB when migrating to new servers. I was coming across truncated code long after they proclaimed they were all fixed. It's been nothing but downhill from there. They haven't made a single update to the site or extension that hasn't had collateral damage in terms of functionality.

FWS isn't a great alternative, but it's probably the next best bad option currently. Not saying it needs to be a priority, but if it's doable, allowing for installs from FWS is still a good idea IMO. Hopefully it won't be long before there's a viable alternative to both.

[tophf]

Styles can be installed from https://openusercss.org so the feature can be considered as implemented.